


Rhododendron Ponticum

by foxybadger42



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Faked Death, Gen, Post-Reichenbach, implied ships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-31 07:36:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6461515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxybadger42/pseuds/foxybadger42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘There was a body. It was him. Definitely him. Molly Hooper laid him out.’</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rhododendron Ponticum

‘Greg – please, no,’ she pleaded as her hands grabbed the front of his coat, blocking his way to the double doors to the morgue.

‘I’ve got to see him, Molly –

‘It – it’s best if you didn’t – it’s not pretty.’

‘I’ve got to, Molly – I’ve got to.’

He pushed past her, but her cold hand grabbed his own. He turned to look at her, noticed she was struggling equally to keep her tears at bay. She looked tired and pale.

‘T-Trust me, Greg,’ she said as she shook her head, her lips tightly pressed together. ‘Y-You don’t want to remember him like that.’

His lips parted in an attempt to speak, his mouth too dry to actually carry any words out. Her eyes were wet with tears, his own throat painfully dry and his heart thumping in his chest.

He had to.

‘I’ve got to, Molly – I’ve got to.’

He pulled his hand loose from her grip and barged through the doors to the morgue. At the furthest table laid a body, a white sheet completely covering it from head to toe. He marched over to the table, not even hesitating as he grabbed the sheet and pulled the sheet and pulled it off the body’s face.

It was him. No question. That angular face was quite unique after all. It was something Greg had noticed right away when he had first met Sherlock more than 7 years ago. The sharp cheekbones. Those thin, curved lips. He was sure the same ice coloured eyes were hidden behind those eyelids – and he was sure they probably felt colder than usual if he were to look at them now.

Molly had warned him it wouldn’t be a nice sight to look at, and it wasn’t. His skin was greying, blood clotted in the veins, bruising around the hairline. Greg eyes moved down, inhaling soundlessly through his parted lips as he pulled the sheet further down. The more he saw, the colder the air in the morgue seemed to become. Inhaling again, this time sharper and almost painful to his constricted throat, he could see more of the damage the impact had done. A visible dent on the left side of the ribcage where the bones had – broken. Large bruising around the waist and stomach – where the organs had burst and internal bleeding had occurred. More bruising around the arms, probably from more burst arteries and broken bones. He was certain the legs would be in the same state.

He shouldn’t have looked.

Molly’s cold hand closed around his hand which held the sheet so tightly that it had started to shake.

‘Greg – please.’

‘-- it can’t be --,’ he croaked, trembling with emotions and shaking his head in disbelieve. It became more and more impossible for him to keep from collapsing.

‘Please – let go.’

‘It can’t be, Molly – it can’t be true –

‘It is, Greg – I’m so sorry, but it is –

‘He’s not dead, he can’t be dead, Molly!’

Using her other hand to pull the sheet out of his grasp, she forced his arm down. He staggered backwards, his legs weak and his stomach turning. It couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be him. Not him. _Why_ him?

‘Christ ---,’ he gasped as he felt his legs close to giving out. Molly forced him to turn towards her, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and held him so tightly that he felt all air escape from his lungs with an audible sob. She put one hand in his neck, and forced his face against her shoulder in an attempt to make him stop looking at the body on the table. He grasped onto her lab coat, face buried in her neck as the tears came, unable to stop himself from letting out a few more sobs and gasps.

‘It’s okay,’ she spoke softly as she massaged the back of his neck with her fingertips. ‘Let it out – it’s okay.’

‘It’s my fault – I should have – I should have done more – Taken the sack – he could still be alive.’

‘We don’t know that,’ she said. ‘Whatever it is that’s going on – if what they say is real – than it was him who did this to himself.’

He voice had broken too, and Greg could feel her body tremble against his. He continued to hold onto her tightly, sobbing against her shoulder. She too let a few tears escape, but he didn’t see them.

‘Come on,’ she said after a while, pulling back from the embrace. ‘Let’s get you out of here – there’s nothing you can do for him anymore,’ she added, looking sideways at the table with Sherlock’s body on it.

he nodded and swallowed hard, not looking back as Molly wrapped her arm around his waist and took him outside.

Greg didn’t see her glancing back at the table, an angry frown on her brow, cursing the man underneath the sheet.

She would have a stern word with him later.

**Author's Note:**

> The clue is in the title.


End file.
